Corey Harris

rhythm and blues singer; guitarist

Personal Information

Born on February 21, 1969, in Denver, CO
Education: Graduated from Bates College, Lewiston, ME; studied in France and Cameroon; returned to Cameroon after graduation for further musical study.

Career

Taught English and French at middle-school level in Napoleonville, LA; played on streets for tips in New Orleans; made demo tape, 1994; signed to Alligator label; released debut album Between Midnight and Day, 1995; toured with Natalie Merchant; released Fish Ain't Bitin', 1997; released Greens in the Garden, 1999; traveled to Mali, 2001; signed to Rounder label; released Downhome Sophisticate, 2002.

Life's Work

"Corey Harris wants to redefine the blues," noted Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio. Traditional acoustic blues attracted a host of young performers in the 1990s and early 2000s, but Harris set himself apart from the pack by looking both back to the African roots of the blues and forward to reggae, hip-hop, and Latin styles. For Harris, the blues represented not simply a musical style but a manifestation of musical ideas that African-descended peoples everywhere held in common. Not a stereotypical blues musician, Harris earned a degree from a small liberal arts college in New England. In his ability to bring together a variety of black musical traditions, he could be compared with the well-known musician Taj Mahal, who was instrumental in exploring the roots and revitalizing the traditional sounds of African-American blues.

Corey Harris was born in Denver, Colorado, on February 21, 1969. As a small child he demonstrated his musical leanings by banging on pots and pans at home. Both his parents were music-loving southerners, and they encouraged the young musician to explore his talent. Early on, Harris heard the folk music of Odetta and the reggae of Bob Marley. He started taking trumpet lessons at age five, but was greatly influenced by listening to his mother's collection of records by bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins, which convinced him to switch to the guitar when he was 12 years old. In high school in Denver, Harris played in a rock band and honed his singing voice in church.

Studied in Cameroon

Harris attended Bates College in Maine, where he studied anthropology and linguistics. He divided a year abroad between France and the West African nation of Cameroon, hoping to study pidgin--the simplified form of English that arose in Africa as a way of communicating along trade routes. African linguistic patterns would eventually have an impact on Harris's music, but at this point he was content simply to soak up the African traditions he encountered in Cameroon, fascinated by the links he heard between the juju music of Cameroon and Nigeria and the African-American blues he knew back home. "I always knew that the basis of black music is rhythm, but it was a great demonstration to see all the different ways rhythm comes out," Harris was quoted as saying on his website.

After graduating from Bates, Harris used the proceeds of a fellowship to return to Cameroon for a year. After his return to the United States, he took a job teaching middle-school French in Napoleonville, Louisiana. He had not yet thought of making his career in music, although he sometimes performed at clubs and coffeehouses in nearby New Orleans. But Harris told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that a fellow teacher caused him to rethink his priorities: "She said, 'You've got so many talents. You don't need to teach.' She was supposed to be my mentor. That stayed with me."

Harris began playing for tips on the streets of New Orleans and barnstorming around the South in his car, performing wherever he could. "I didn't have a record deal or an agent or anything," Harris told Guitar Player. "It was just me and my guitar, making enough money for gas and motels. There were sacrifices, but I was just crazy about playing." In 1994 Harris made a demo tape, and a year later he was signed to the blues-oriented Alligator label, awaiting the release of his debut album, Between Midnight and Day.

Appeared on Living Blues Cover

That album featured Harris and his guitar covering acoustic blues classics such as Charley Patton's "Pony Blues," Sleepy John Estes's "I Ain't Gonna Be Worried No More," and Mississippi Fred McDowell's "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning." Strong sales and positive reviews for Between Midnight and Day put Harris on the cover of Living Blues magazine and led to an offer to open for 10,000 Maniacs vocalist Natalie Merchant on her 1996 tour. But Down Beat reviewer Robert Santelli, even as he praised Harris's "jagged, salt-of-the-earth voice" and "rough-'n'-tumble, wonderfully rhythmic guitar style," argued that "Harris needs his own songs to make a real splash."

Harris took that advice to heart on his second album, Fish Ain't Bitin', which featured New Orleans-style brass on several tracks and offered his own compositions, including "5-0 Blues," one of several Harris songs that would address the issue of police misconduct. That album again snared the attention of alternative rock artists; Harris was asked to perform on the 1998 album Mermaid Avenue, which featured completions of previously unfinished songs by folk legend Woody Guthrie.

On his third album, 1999's Greens from the Garden, Harris gave full expression to the stylistic freedom that had been brewing in his career up to that point. Harris rejected the blues revivalist label. "That's really the nature of the media," he told the Chicago Sun-Times. "Anything they can sum up in one simple phrase, they'll do it." Harris produced the album himself, lending it the feeling of a relaxed live performance. Singing in both English and French, and accompanied by his band and various guest musicians, he delved into cajun music, New Orleans funk, jazz, Cameroonian juju, Piedmont blues, and other styles. With pieces such as "Basehead," which depicted cocaine users as inheritors of a slave mentality, Harris grew as a songwriter.

Moved to Rounder Label

Greens from the Garden drew critical raves and planted Harris firmly on the playlists of Americana-oriented radio stations--an increasingly common format in the nonprofit public radio sector. The album's only downside was that it strained his relationship with Alligator, a label mostly devoted to straight-ahead blues material. The label insisted on a professional remix of the material Harris delivered, and label head Bruce Iglauer, while supporting Harris's new creative freedom, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the album "got away from my personal tastes as a blues fan." Harris recorded one more album for Alligator, a duo collaboration with pianist Henry Butler titled Vu-Du Menz. But he moved to the eclectic Rounder label for his next release, 2002's Downhome Sophisticate.

The album reprised "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning," this time in an explosive electric sermon-like arrangement. Acoustic tracks included "Capitaine," an evocation of a Niger River fish, and in several places the album benefited from a fresh infusion of African influences--Harris had traveled to Mali shortly before going into the studio. Harris addressed the theme of African-American mistrust of the police in "Santoro," which likened a police car to a frightful biblical beast on the prowl. He incorporated Latin traditions into the album, many of whose song texts were cast in reggae-influenced or African-influenced speech patterns. In all, noted Robert L. Doerschuk of All Music Guide, "few artists reflect the breadth of black music as vividly as Corey Harris." Harris was well on his way to becoming the alchemist of black music, recombining its constituent elements into new and powerful substances.

Awards

Selected: Watson fellowship, for study in Africa, early 1990s.

Works

Selected discography

• Between Midnight and Day, Alligator, 1995.
• Fish Ain't Bitin', Alligator, 1997.
• Greens from the Garden, Alligator, 1999.
• (With Henry Butler) Vu-Du Menz, Alligator, 2000.
• Downhome Sophisticate, Rounder, 2002.

Further Reading

Periodicals

• Albuquerque Journal, November 16, 2001, p. 2.
• Chicago Sun-Times, May 21, 1999, p. Weekend Plus-9.
• Down Beat, March 1996, p. 55; July 1997, p. 63.
• Guitar Player, August 1999, p. 35.
• Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), May 12, 1999, p. E1.
• Seattle Times, January 20, 2000, p. G11.
• Vancouver Province, August 13, 2002, p. B11.
• Washington Post, May 29, 2002, p. C5; December 6, 2002, p. C4.

On-line

• "Corey Harris Biography," Corey Harris Website, www.coreyharrismusic.com (March 28, 2003).
• "Corey Harris," All Music Guide, www.allmusic.com (March 28, 2003).

Other

• Additional information for this profile was obtained from National Public Radio's, "Morning Edition" program aired on May 17, 2002.

— James M. Manheim

See Corey Harris Lyrics

• Born: February 21, 1969, Denver, CO
• Active: '90s, 2000s
• Genres: Blues
• Instrument: Slide Guitar, Vocals, Guitar
• Representative Albums: "Greens from the Garden," "Vu-Du Menz," "Mississippi to Mali"

Biography

Corey Harris has earned substantial critical acclaim as one of the few contemporary bluesmen able to channel the raw, direct emotion of acoustic Delta blues without coming off as an authenticity-obsessed historian. Although he is well versed in the early history of blues guitar, he's no well-mannered preservationist, mixing a considerable variety of influences -- from New Orleans to the Caribbean to Africa -- into his richly expressive music. In doing so, he's managed to appeal to a wide spectrum of blues fans, from staunch traditionalists to more contemporary sensibilities.

Harris was born in Denver, CO, on February 21, 1969, and began playing guitar at age 12, when he fell in love with his mother's Lightnin' Hopkins records. He played in a rock & roll band in high school, as well as the marching band, and developed his singing abilities in church. Through Bates College in Maine (where he majored in anthropology), Harris traveled to Cameroon to study African linguistics and returned there on a post-graduate fellowship; during his time there, he soaked up as much African music as possible, entranced by its complex polyrhythms. After returning to the U.S., Harris taught English and French in Napoleonville, LA, and during his spare time he played the clubs, coffeehouses, and street corners of nearby New Orleans. His local reputation eventually earned him a deal with Alligator, one of the pre-eminent blues labels in the South. In 1995, Alligator released Harris' debut album, Between Midnight and Day, a one-man, one-guitar affair that illustrated his mastery of numerous variations on the Delta blues style. The record won rave reviews and even some mainstream media attention, marking Harris as an exciting new presence on the blues scene; it also earned him an opening slot on tour with ex-10,000 Maniacs singer Natalie Merchant.

Harris followed it up with Fish Ain't Bitin' in 1997, a record that began to expand his style by adding a New Orleans-style brass section on several tracks, while emphasizing his own original compositions to a much greater degree. The next year, Harris was invited to participate in the Billy Bragg/Wilco collaboration Mermaid Avenue, which set a selection of unfinished Woody Guthrie songs to music; Harris played guitar and contributed bluesy backup vocals to several tunes. In 1999, Harris released what most critics called his strongest work to date, Greens from the Garden; hailed as a landmark in some quarters, the record delved deeper into New Orleans funk and R&B, while recasting its covers in surprising but effective new contexts (even reggae and hip-hop). The result was a kaleidoscope of black musical styles that earned Harris even more widespread attention than his debut. Veteran pianist Henry Butler appeared on the record, and for the follow-up, Harris recorded an entire album in tandem with Butler; issued in 2000, Vu-Du Menz updated several different strains of early jazz and blues.

Harris subsequently left Alligator for Rounder, and debuted for his new label in 2002 with Downhome Sophisticate, a typically eclectic outing that explored his African influences and added Latin music to his seemingly endless sonic palette. Two more albums followed on Rounder, the marvelous Mississippi to Mali in 2003 and Daily Bread in 2005. Ever the musical explorer, Harris turned to Jamaica and roots reggae for the template on his next album, Zion Crossroads, which was released in 2007 on Telarc Records. A second Telarc album, Blu. Black, appeared in 2009 and found Harris continuing to be fascinated by Jamaican music. ~ Steve Huey & Steve Leggett, All Music Guide

Mississippi to Mali Buy this CD	Downhome Sophisticate Buy this CD	Fish Ain't Bitin' Buy this CD	Greens from the Garden Buy this CD	Daily Bread Buy this CD
Zion Crossroads Buy this CD	Vu-Du Menz Buy this CD	Live At Starr Hill 1/27/01 Buy this CD	Between Midnight and Day Buy this CD

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)